This is No Way to Run a Business....
So, three days, three copies of Wall-E, and four DVD players later I finally get to watch my special edition DVD of Adorable Robot Adventures. We had exchanged the first and second copy and were about to write the third one off when we discovered that the reason my disk wouldn't play on any of the players in house was due to some strange form of copy protection that was only used on the three disk edition of the movie.
Upon discovering this we tried to use the digital copy, at least then we could actually WATCH the movie in some format. Unfortunately the digital copy disk needed an authorization code to work. A code that never actually made it in the packaging. One of the three copies we went through had an 800 number to receive said code stickered on the outside of the shrink wrap, the rest had no such beast.
So we paid 35 bucks for what at this point amounts to a disk of special features telling us how they made a movie that we can not watch.
It was about then that we (my family) realized we would either have to suck it up and find some way to make the DVD either give up the movie in some fashion or return it and exchange it for a normal copy with only half the features. I refused to buy another copy of the thing, Disney fucked this up and I am sure as hell not rewarding them for it. In the end we tried to (ironically) rip the DVD contents and see if there was some way for us to actually play it.
The results of this were not very successful even after much net research and the family tech guy's jiggery-pokery. Apparently whoever encrypted this thing decided to insert bad info and sectors in the disk to further prevent those filthy pirates from succeeding. How anyone thought that inserting bad info into a disk wouldn't affect performance remains to be seen.
So finally after realizing nothing was going to help the situation in a last ditch effort I shoved the disk into my desk top's DVD drive (we previously had tried two TV/DVD player rigs and my parent's 2 computer DVD drives) and it worked. Beautifully. Painlessly. The movie is indeed as good as I remember I just wish I didn't have to go through all that shit to get to it.
So long story short, had to recreate the end of Cinderella to get the DVD to work (is this the player that will do it? NO, next fit...) which is ridiculous. Out of the five DVD drives in this house only one of them can play the DVD.
This is unacceptable, if any other company did it there would be a recall and an apology. But this is Disney, these disks have been out for a month and there has been no admittance of error. An angry e-mail has been sent from here to Disney's DVD support office where I am optimistically hoping someone gives me a fix or replacement or something.
Hilariously enough just when I was in the middle of finally watching the movie and starting to calm down my dad came in showing me another Disney DVD that was purchased for Christmas that has two discs, both of which are labeled "Disk 2". This will be handled tomorrow, until then we just sigh and move on.
Upon discovering this we tried to use the digital copy, at least then we could actually WATCH the movie in some format. Unfortunately the digital copy disk needed an authorization code to work. A code that never actually made it in the packaging. One of the three copies we went through had an 800 number to receive said code stickered on the outside of the shrink wrap, the rest had no such beast.
So we paid 35 bucks for what at this point amounts to a disk of special features telling us how they made a movie that we can not watch.
It was about then that we (my family) realized we would either have to suck it up and find some way to make the DVD either give up the movie in some fashion or return it and exchange it for a normal copy with only half the features. I refused to buy another copy of the thing, Disney fucked this up and I am sure as hell not rewarding them for it. In the end we tried to (ironically) rip the DVD contents and see if there was some way for us to actually play it.
The results of this were not very successful even after much net research and the family tech guy's jiggery-pokery. Apparently whoever encrypted this thing decided to insert bad info and sectors in the disk to further prevent those filthy pirates from succeeding. How anyone thought that inserting bad info into a disk wouldn't affect performance remains to be seen.
So finally after realizing nothing was going to help the situation in a last ditch effort I shoved the disk into my desk top's DVD drive (we previously had tried two TV/DVD player rigs and my parent's 2 computer DVD drives) and it worked. Beautifully. Painlessly. The movie is indeed as good as I remember I just wish I didn't have to go through all that shit to get to it.
So long story short, had to recreate the end of Cinderella to get the DVD to work (is this the player that will do it? NO, next fit...) which is ridiculous. Out of the five DVD drives in this house only one of them can play the DVD.
This is unacceptable, if any other company did it there would be a recall and an apology. But this is Disney, these disks have been out for a month and there has been no admittance of error. An angry e-mail has been sent from here to Disney's DVD support office where I am optimistically hoping someone gives me a fix or replacement or something.
Hilariously enough just when I was in the middle of finally watching the movie and starting to calm down my dad came in showing me another Disney DVD that was purchased for Christmas that has two discs, both of which are labeled "Disk 2". This will be handled tomorrow, until then we just sigh and move on.